Grade Inflation: A Problem and a Proposal

A national survey released at the beginning of this academic year
suggested that public schools are suffering from the same inflation of
grades that has beset undergraduate university programs. In a survey of
entering college freshmen, researchers at the University of California
at Los Angeles found that grade inflation in high school had hit an
all-time high. For example, 27 percent of the students reported that
their grade averages were A-minus or higher, compared with 12.5 percent
who said so in 1969.

At the undergraduate level, several studies have confirmed that the
phenomenon exists there to perhaps to an even greater degree. For
example, in a study he conducted while at Harvard University, Arthur
Levine, the president of Teachers College, Columbia University, found,
using a representative sample of 4,900 undergraduates, that the
proportion of students with grade-point averages of A-minus or higher
almost quadrupled in the years from 1969 to 1993, moving from 7 percent
to 26 percent. Ironically, however, 60 percent of the students in the
1993 sample reported the belief that their grade-point average
understated the true quality of their academic work.

Ironically, too, many of the best undergraduate institutions are
leading rather than resisting this trend. At Harvard, the proportion of
undergraduate grades of A-minus or higher increased from 22 percent in
1966 to 43 percent in 1991. The grade of C, which nominally signifies
"average" performance, has virtually disappeared; in 1991, over 90
percent of the grades were B-minus or higher. At Smith College, the
proportion of A's and B's is 89.3 percent. At Princeton University, 80
percent of undergraduates receive nothing but A's and B's, and at
Stanford University, only 8 percent get C's and D's, with none getting
F's. At Williams College, 48 percent of the seniors graduated with
honors in 1992, compared with 31 percent in 1985.

The less elite institutions, though they perhaps start at a lower
point, have generally failed to resist the reverse gravitational pull.
For example, a survey of four-year institutions in Virginia revealed
that the mean grade-point average climbed from a below-average 1.81 in
1967 (with "average" being C, which equals 2.0) to an above-average
2.67 in 1976. Mr. Levine's study provides evidence that the trend line
in recent years has continued upward at these colleges and universities
generally.

Yet, during this same period, there is no evidence to suggest that
the academic quality of students has gone up proportionately. For
example, a study in Tennessee revealed that the state's American
College Testing program average score dropped from 19.1 to 17.1 during
the period from 1969-70 to 1975-76, and that it subsequently has
hovered around 17.5 into the 1980's. On the national level, the verbal
and math scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test had dropped to a
notably lower level in 1991, as compared with 1969, causing the College
Board to contribute to the problem by artificially raising the average
scores. At many prestigious private institutions, admissions standards
in recent years have softened due to economic conditions and, according
to some sources, cultural diversification.

The trend at Harvard and elsewhere is that high grades are
particularly pronounced in the humanities. The average grade-point
averages by field at Harvard line up as follows: humanities--between
A-minus and B-plus; social-science majors--between B and B-plus; and
natural sciences--between B-minus and B. A recent study at Stanford
University found that the students in the humanities had the highest
grades, whereas those in engineering had the lowest. A 1991 study by
two researchers at Williams College of seven prestigious institutions,
including Amherst College, Duke University, Pomona College, and the
University of Wisconsin, found the same differential drift. The elite
institutions are not alone in this internal trend. For example, a
national survey of urban, nonresidential institutions found that
education and the arts typically were high-grading departments, and
physical sciences and mathematics were low-grading departments.

Some academics may argue that the departments that award higher
grades do so because they attract exceptionally high-achieving
students. But there is no evidence that education and the humanities
generally attract superior students. Moreover, in a study at a Virginia
college, the difference in grading was, to a notable extent,
independent of the students enrolled as majors in the department. More
specifically, the researchers found that for the four years studied,
five departments, led by education, awarded grades that were, on the
average, more than 0.10 grade points higher than those earned by the
same students at the same time in other departments. Conversely, four
other departments, led by mathematics, awarded grades that were 0.10
grade points lower than those earned by the same students in other
departments.

Yet, the Williams researchers found that publicizing such results
for their institution had the effect of increasing rather than
restraining grade inflation; the low-grading departments eased up to
retain or regain enrollments.

Easier grading at the undergraduate level is directly related to
student ratings of teaching. Studies in various disciplines have found
significant correlation between student ratings of instructors and
expected grades of students. Although some academics argue that the
higher ratings are entirely attributable to increased academic
achievement, the more candid and cogent interpretation is that a
significant contributing factor is faculty catering, in terms of
grades, to student influence, in terms of ratings. For example, in a
national survey of deans of colleges of education and of colleges of
arts and sciences, over 70 percent of the respondents agreed that the
use of student evaluations as a consideration for promotion and tenure
was a major reason for grade inflation. Various studies have provided
empirical evidence supporting this quid pro quo hypothesis.

Some observers have attributed grade inflation at the undergraduate
level to the generally higher grading norms at the graduate level,
where in many disciplines a B has historically been the average grade.
Public attention and empirical data about grading practices at the
graduate level are much more limited. Although the lay person may not
realize that there is a difference between grading at the undergraduate
and graduate levels, perhaps based on the general rigor of law schools
and medical schools, the common conception among academics is that
graduate grades often are approximately half B's and half A's.

To the limited extent that I have been able to pierce the academic
and administrative veil that covers graduate grading, it appears that
grade inflation is far from confined to the preceding levels of the
educational system. It is not without trepidation that I report the
data from my own university. Although Lehigh University had generally
limited grade inflation at the undergraduate level, with the average
grade-point average rising less than .03 from 1979 to 1986, the mean
G.P.A. at the graduate level has increased steadily from 3.30 in
1979-80 to 3.47 in 1985-86. Moreover, the mean G.P.A. of the college of
education, which is entirely on the graduate level, has risen during
this period from 3.60 to 3.71. By 1992, the education G.P.A. had
reached 3.74; given the negligible number of C's, the stark reality is
that about three-quarters of the grades given are A's.

When I brought the matter to the attention of my colleagues, they
were largely unconcerned. Rationales and rationalizations abounded,
from academic freedom to student quality. Yet, academic freedom is a
very limited legal umbrella. It only applies to grading, if at all, at
public institutions, and even in that limited context, it does not bar
an administrator from changing the student's grade. Similarly, there is
no evidence that student quality in graduate education courses is
higher than other disciplines or that it has increased significantly
during the past decade. Yet it is at the graduate level that grade
inflation particularly threatens the reliability, validity, and
credibility of G.P.A.'s.

When, for an accreditation review, we tried to do a study of the
effectiveness of various admissions criteria, such as the Miller
Analogies Test, in predicting academic success in our college, the
statisticians advised us that the project was futile because there
was hardly any variance in the predicted variable, graduate
grades.

A colleague of mine taught various courses and published several
articles in which he emphatically exhorted school administrators to
stem the tide of making teacher evaluation an empty ritual. He cited
a study he had done that revealed that approximately 99 percent of
the teachers in Pennsylvania had been evaluated at the maximum level
(typically 80 points) of the official rating scale. Yet, I later
found out that he typically gave approximately 95 percent of the
students in his graduate educational-leadership course grades of
A.

As the then-chair of the college's promotion and tenure
committee, I suggested that among the multiple sources of evidence
used to evaluate teaching, such as student ratings, peer
observations, teaching and testing materials, course loads, and class
sizes, we add grade distribution. My junior and senior colleagues'
resistance to the idea was both active and passive, effectively
stymieing its implementation.

When I suggested that the lay public would, if the graph of our
grading trends were published, find these data disturbing, several of
my colleagues steadfastly maintained that the results were not in the
least embarrassing.

When I proposed to endow a modest university teaching award for
graduate education based on two primary criteria, grades given to
students and ratings given by students, they roundly rejected the
offer.

Lehigh, however, is far from alone with regard to grading in
graduate education.

When the rationalizations are stripped away from the rationales, the
basic problem is that high grades are simply easier. It is difficult to
initially arrive at and ultimately defend low grades, particularly when
the overall academic trend is in the opposite direction. Conversely, in
rather indiscriminately issuing high grades, faculty members feel more
secure about enrollments, student ratings, and even administrators'
attention. The "clients" or "customers" are happy. And just as long as
their parents, the graduate schools, the alumni, and the potential
employers ignore or are ignorant of the charade of the Lake Wobegon
effect (everybody being above average) gone amok, the only limit to
grade inflation, unlike monetary inflation, is the 4.0 top of the
scale.

Pointing the finger at the rest of society merely mirrors the
problem. Citing grade inflation, Hobart and William Smith College's
president, Richard Hersh, recently observed that "colleges and
universities must accept some responsibility for the culture of
neglect, for we have succumbed to the lower[ed] standards of the larger
culture."

Among the relatively few academics who have focused on mitigating
the problems of grade inflation, some have proposed increasing the
number of grading levels in the grading scale. Given the tendency to
cluster grades at the top end of the scale, however, the better
alternative, at least for graduate education courses, which often
purport to follow a competency-based approach, is to reduce the scale
to two levels, such as "mastery" and "non-mastery." An additional and
more generally applicable solution is to accompany the student's grade
received in the course with the average grade assigned by the
instructor for that course. Although proposed repeatedly during the
past 10 to 15 years--and reportedly in practice at such locales as
Canada's McGill University and the University of Toronto--this worthy
proposal has received little more than benign neglect at American
institutions.

The recent steps taken by American colleges and universities in this
area at the undergraduate level have been modest at best. For example,
Stanford has re-established the grade of F; Princeton and Yale
University have added a grade of D to their pass-fail option; and Lewis
and Clark College has revived the D grade generally. At the graduate
level, examples are rare: The University of Virginia's law school
recently adopted a requirement that professors give their classes no
higher than a B average.

Below, I offer a different kind of proposal to supplement or
stimulate other steps to combat grade inflation, with schools of
education serving as the model, or leading, field:

Offer: An endowment of $10,000 for an undergraduate and/or
graduate teaching award based on an index of grades given (i.e.,
G.P.A.) and ratings received (i.e., average of numerical student
ratings of instruction), with the former weighted inversely and the
latter weighted directly.

Eligibility: School or college of education at a university
with annual teaching awards.

Conditions: Minimum inverse weighting of at least 40
percent for grades given and minimum direct weighting of at least 40
percent for ratings received, with the remainder being peer judgment,
via a faculty selection committee.

Deadline: Send a written request for more information to
Prof. Perry A. Zirkel, College of Education, Lehigh University,
Bethlehem, Pa. 18015 by Monday, April 10, 1995.

Perry A. Zirkel is the University Professor of Education and Law at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.

Vol. 14, Issue 24, Pages 28, 30

Published in Print: March 8, 1995, as Grade Inflation: A Problem and a Proposal

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